The unseen part of moving to U.S: How to survive the mental battle

It never once crossed my mind that moving to America would almost throw me and my husband in a downward spiral. 
People told us horrible stories about sleeping on the streets on their first days in U.S., but no one got into the dirty details of their mental battles. The worst we heard was being “homesick for months”.

 

Not in a million years would I imagine myself bawling over my former life. It was not a good one. Poverty aside, the close minded people were our true source of unhappiness. So what is that we are grieving? 

The answer that took us weeks to found is as simple as day light: we miss our social statuses.

I am no longer a well reputed journalist, but a server in a luxurious retirement home and my husband downgraded from a hard-earned position as an assistant manager to a fresh market assistant at a popular retail U.S. company. The stone cold truth is that we made incredible sacrifices to move here and somewhere in the process our brains got the wrong message. That God will repay our efforts with spiritual and financial abundance. Instead, we got free tickets to an emotional roller-coaster.

First, we felt scared and lonely.

“Whoa, our family is on the other side of the world”, I realized one morning, as I watched a plane go by.

Then we panicked. What if nobody wanted to hire us? The joy of being offered a job lasted just a couple of days, before thoughts like “I deserve better than this” arise.

To make things worse, we feel guilty for being ungrateful. 

Every day I struggle not to slip into depression. My husband, once an incurable optimist, forces himself to laugh so I can follow along. As a couple of Filipino expats living in Canada perfectly describe it, depression is part of an initiation process.

 According to Hiram Mok, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at UBC mentioned in the article, expats experience symptoms like sadness, memory loss, fatigue, poor concentration, low energy levels, and a lack of ambition. Rather than ignore these signs, I smash them by doing pleasant things like writing this blog, going outside, drinking a beer, exercise and so on. Where’s the fun in giving up? There would be no story worth telling to my kids and nephews. 
The way I see it, this immigration process is a big healing bruise that goes from deep purple to yellow and pink, before eventually vanishes. Till then, there’s little we can do to hide it or to rush it.